


65 32' 47'' N by 4 27' 13'' W

by spiderfire



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Original Work, The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bird/Human Hybrids, Books, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Hobbit References, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:39:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The books were a gift from Urania because Urania felt sorry for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	65 32' 47'' N by 4 27' 13'' W

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> Sumi - This was the first story I wrote. I finished it and I was happy with it. Then I re-read your prompt and I realized I had some of things you did not want. So I wrote you another story. However, since it was your prompt, I thought you might want to see it.

Her island consisted of rugged black cliffs that protruded from the icy sea. For much of the year the cliffs were draped with icicles that glittered in the Arctic moonlight but, in the long hours of the polar summer, the cliffs took on a greenish hue as moss and algae clung to their steep walls. 

Her tiny hut, built from broken blocks of rock, clung to the top of the cliff. Far below was a cove of clear blue water. The cove was a splash of calm, a hidden harbor in the vastness of the turbulent polar sea. Two arms of jutting rock nearly touched at the entrance to the cove, missing each other by a bare ship’s width. Twice a day, treacherous currents poured through that tiny gap as the tide rose and fell. And yet, within her cove was a nursery. Generations of Arctic seals came to raise their pups and feast on the fish who called her harbor home.

Throughout the year the Arctic winds pounded her island with driving rain and slushy snow. She delighted, as her kind does, in the storms. When the wind howled and the rain blew sideways, she perched on a jagged rock that protruded from the cliff. Far above the roaring currents she sang into the wind. Her voice added a chilling descant to the bass roar of the waves and the tenor howl of the air. Once every few years or so, her song attracted a half-broken ship seeking shelter in her quiet harbor. When the black speck came in view, she heightened her song, calling to the sailors with a promise of safety. And then, when the ship wrecked on her rocky shore, she would soar down to the wreckage, drifting on her white-plumed wings, and pick through the remnants for her sustenance. 

Today, though, it was a beautiful summer day. The sky was a deep cerulean blue and the lightest of winds stirred her hair. Such a day reminded her of the land of her youth, when her twin sister played the lute and they sang frolicking duets in the shade of a lovely old olive tree. The sky back then had been azure, scattered with feathery white clouds and the days had been long, giving way into magically warm nights.

Her island was about as different from the land of her birth as one could imagine. There were no trees, no other people, and the night was never warm. Unlike her home which had been soft and green, her island was hard and angular and black. Her island had two seasons: the time of perpetual night and the time of perpetual sun. It was now the time of the sun. For hours the sun hung low in the sky, creating a golden trail across the sea’s gently undulating surface. In her youth she would have said that the glowing trail was the road for Apollo’s chariot, but now she knew better. She knew of the tilt of the Earth and the orbit of the moon and how light refracted through the atmosphere. She knew of the analemma and celestial equator and the international date line. She knew of high and low pressures, of cold fronts and the geostrophic balance. She knew of Newton’s theory of gravity and how that caused the tides, and she knew of Einstein’s theory of relativity and how that changed the position of the stars. All that knowledge did not change the beauty of the sunlight on the ocean, nor her utter boredom with the day. 

She sat in a hollow high on the cliff face. Over the years, the rocky hollow had been worn smooth to the shape her body. From her perch she could see the strait that led into her harbor and she could hear the waves washing up against the shore but she was not paying attention. All her attention was on a book that rested across her knees. 

The book, like all her books, had appeared on the shelf in her hut. The shelf was the gift of Urania who had visited her once at the bidding of her twin. Her sister had allowed a ship to pass, and in her silent days of motherhood before her death, she had longed to know how her twin faired.

Urania, who thrived on minds of men, had found her on this desolate rocky shore. When Urania had seen her island, she had been horrified and had begged her to return to the cradle of civilization. Of course she couldn’t, but even if she could, the solitude suited her. Very well, Urania had said, then share in the gift of my men. 

Now, when she took a book from the shelf, she thought of that day when Urania had visited, and of her sister. Long ago, when the time of bonding had come to them, her sister had stayed on their mother’s fair island, right in the middle of the world’s shipping lanes where she would have a steady diet. She was not like her sister or others of her kind and such excess made her ill. She had flown north until her wings would carry her no further. Then she had settled here where she could live a long life, without the steady toll of ships and men. 

Urania’s shelf usually shared with her the fruits of the men who took Urania’s gifts, but from time to time, it also brought her works from those taken by the muse Clio or even Melpomene. On this day, she was reading a book that had to be a gift of Calliope. It was an epic ballad of a group of adventurers, seeking a lost treasure. She was at the point in the story where the thief was lost beneath the ground, having a battle of wits with a ghostly presence, when the black speck of a distant sail appear on the horizon. She did not see it.

The boat was not sailing towards the island, but past it. Had it continued on that path, all would have been well. But then it tacked and turned the other way, still not pointed at the island, but on a path that would cross itself. She did not notice, though, because the party had been favored by Artemis and rescued by giant eagles. Together they soared over the kallikantzaros who had massed to kill them. 

The boat tacked again, turning back the way it was going originally, each tack bringing it closer to the island. Had she looked up, she would be able to make out the mast and the large white sail that hung from a yardarm, but she did not look up. She was reading about how the friends battled Arachne and won. 

Then the boat was furling its sail and the quiet hum of a motor drifted through the air. She did not notice because the thief, who by this point in the story it was clear he was favored by Hermes, was scouting the lair of the drakon. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that it was slack-tide and, for the next hour, the strait into her harbor would be navigable, but she did not care because the thief was being exceedingly daring, sneaking away with a golden goblet. 

As the boat threaded its way through strait, she suddenly became aware of the danger. She dropped the book and leapt to her feet, but it was too late. The boat had cleared the last of the rocks and was dropping anchor in the quiet waters of her protected cove. She opened her mouth to scream, to cry out, but no sound emerged. 

With a soundless sob, she crumpled to her knees, the book cast off to the side. Already she could feel the changes. The calamus, the follicles that gripped her feathers, relaxed. One by one, the primaries fell from her arms, followed by a gentle fall of down. Great tears ran down her face as she cried, naked in a puddle of her own feathers, surrounded by the black cliffs that had been her home for millennia.

**Author's Note:**

> This was not the story I planned to write, but then I sat down and this is what I got. It is set in a corner of the Earth that few people get to visit. I am one of the lucky ones. Alas, there is no island there, but if there was, this is what I wish it would be like. 
> 
> On the research cruise, we weathered out a storm in the lee of the Faroe islands, protected on three sides from the hurricane force winds, surrounded by towering cliffs black cliffs. We had steamed in from the open ocean where waves had crashed over the bow of the boat, making what sailors call green water, tossing the boat around like it was a toy. Once we were in protected waters, the master let me up on the bridge and I have never seen anything so beautiful and terrifying in my life. 
> 
> Two bits of siren lore I used:  
> 1) They are sometimes depicted as birds, sometimes as women.  
> 2) It is said that they die when they allow a ship to pass.


End file.
